Evaluation of a Commercial Colloidal Gold Assay for Detection of Influenza A and B Virus in Children’s Respiratory Specimens

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate the clinical diagnostic value of colloidal gold assay for detection of influenza A and B virus. Methods: Results were compared for colloidal gold assay for influenza antigen detection and real-time RT-PCR for RNA detection. Results: By performing the colloidal gold assay, the positive rate was 25.67% (105/409) for influenza A virus and 8.56% (35/409) for influenza B virus. While tested by real-time RT-PCR, 107(26.2%) were positive for influenza A virus and 35(8.6%) for influenza B virus. Using real-time RT-PCR as the gold standard, the sensitivity and specificity of the colloidal gold assay were 84.1% and 95.0%, respectively, for influenza A virus and 85.7% and 98.7% for influenza B virus. Conclusion: This colloidal gold assay may be one of the viable tools for the rapid screening for influenza viruses in an outpatient clinical practice.

Keywords:

• Influenza virus
• colloidal gold assay
• real-time RT-PCR

Disclosure statement

The authors have no potential conflicts of interest to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the Medical Scientific Projects from Health Department of Zhejiang Province (2015KYA119), the National Nature Science Foundation of China (81671495 and 81701535).